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BiCROS in Noise

BiCROS in Noise

Oeding and Valente (2013) examined the performance of a bilateral contralateral routing of signal (BiCROS) hearing aid in noise while engaging the receiver and transmitter noise reduction (NR) technology within Unitron’s Tandem 16 (16 channel) BiCROS hearing aid. The authors report that there are few peer-reviewed studies in which the efficacy and effectiveness of BiCROS technology has been examined in background noise. Twenty-one adults experienced with BiCROS participated in the study. Each participant was fitted using NAL-NL1; fittings were verified with real-ear insertion gain measures. The measurement tool employed was the reception threshold for sentences (RTS) using the hearing-in-noise test (HINT). Each participant had the BiCROS for 30 days prior to final testing.

The abbreviated profile of hearing aid benefit (APHAB) indicated subjective benefit with regard to EC, BN, and RV subscales. However, testing in un-aided versus three aided conditions (no noise reduction [NR], mild NR, and maximal NR) revealed no significant differences in the RTS. Indeed, unaided provided the best RTS scores. Oeding and Valente report that "…it is possible that the seemingly contradictory finding between objective and subjective measures may not be exclusively related to the dependent variable (differences in performance for speech in noise) but may be related in part to other subjective measurements not evaluated in this study…."